Wawona Hotel in Yosemite National Park

Tracy and I had a little 'get-away' trip the week before Thanksgiving. We drove into Yosemite via Mariposa on Highway 140. It's been a long time since either of us has driven in through the El Portal entrance station. It's a beautiful drive. There was still a little Fall color, and we had the Park to ourselves!

El Capitan was still there! They're just getting ready to decorate it for Christmas.


There was just a little bitty dribble of water trickling over the edge of Yosemite Falls.





We hiked around The Valley and enjoyed the views. We had lunch in the Cafeteria at the Yosemite Lodge. Then we hiked up to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls.


Then we drove to the Wawona Hotel and checked-in to our dinky little room. This picture pretty much shows the entire room. We thought we would try a room without a bath this year. It wasn't too bad (it cost a lot less). There wasn't anyone there, so we had the 'shared bathrooms' all to ourselves whenever we showered, etc.


It's a grand old hotel that was built in 1879. There's a lot of history to enjoy if you're into that stuff.



On Thursday morning we hiked around the meadow Loop trail. In the afternoon, I hiked up the Chilnualna Falls trail. It didn't take long to find some very pretty scenery.



At the end of Chilnualna Fall Road was this little mountain cabin. Wouldn't you love to live there!?!

Kayaking on Shaver Lake

I went Kayaking yesterday with my buddy Joe, and a group of people from the Fresno Kayak & Canoe Club. Click this link to go to the Fresno Kayak & Canoe Club website to see pictures that Joe took. His pictures from yesterday start with #16. Joe took a lot of pictures of the people, I took pictures of the landscape.

It was cold and frosty when we arrived at about 8:15 AM. There was an erie mist hovering over the water -




After paddling for a couple of miles, we pulled over for a break. We had pumpkin pie and cheese cake. Is this a Kayaking club, or just a front for eating sweets?




Jeter brought along Anne. She just jumped in the back of his Kayak and came along for the ride! She loved to play fetch.




It was a beautiful day.




Kayak parking lot -




We paddled for 6.5 miles (Matt brought a GPS). The clouds came in full force when we got back to the parking lot.




Then it got really cold.




Anne went for one last swim before we all loaded up and headed out. Here she is after being dried off.

Malawi 2009

The Northside Christian Church Youth Group went on a short-term missions trip to Malawi Africa this summer. Nick decided he would go along! They left on July 21st, and traveled for about 36 hours to get to Malawi. They had a 12 hour lay-over in Frankfurt, Germany. The plane out of Frankfurt had problems. They waited an hour on the plane, then got off the plane and waited 2 hours in the terminal, then got another plane and waited another hour. Their next stop was Johannesburg, Africa. Because they had plane troubles in Frankfurt, they barely made their connecting flight in Johannesburg.


Here they are in Frankfurt -

In the Airport -

This is John (the one on the right), he is the Youth Pastor at Northside. He coordinated the trip -

They got to play with and encourage a lot of kids in Malawi -







They got to see some amazing scenery -






One night, they had a chicken dinner. It may have been the freshest chicken they have ever eaten (considering they had to slaughter, pluck and the cook the chicken themselves) -


They had to walk a half a mile (round trip) to get their drinking water -

Occasionally they would travel, and they usually rode on these small buses (standing room only) -



They painted a church while they were there -

They also went on a safari. Here's their group picture that day -

Nick reports that it was all very "amazing!". He is starting to save his money so he can go again in the summer of 2011!

They arrived home on Thursday, August 6th (after about 48 hours of traveling).

You can view a lot more pictures from the trip at this PhotoBucket site.

Of course I haven't even touched on the amazing details of the trip. To know more, you'll have to talk with Nick!

The Voca People

Found on Facebook - Thanks Scott Amaral - This is very cool...

Fish-Bag!

We like to buy salmon fillet's from Costco. They come individually wrapped, in a large 're-closable' (zip-lock) bag. A couple of months ago, Tracy opened the freezer to get some salmon out for dinner that night, and there was no salmon left, but the salmon bag was still there! I happened to be walking by, and needless to say, I was correctly chastised for leaving the empty bag in the freezer the last time I pulled out some salmon. Tracy handed me the empty salmon bag and said, "now throw this away!" Nick was within earshot, and he and I thought it was pretty funny. Tracy headed down the hall to another room, so I thought it would be even more funny if I put the empty 'fish-bag' back in the freezer, so I did!

Within just a few hours, Tracy re-discovered the fish-bag. And of course I heard about it! I thought that was that, and life would now continue as normal, prank-free and happy.

I don't remember if it was the same day, or the next, but I'll never forget that night when I went to bed. I pulled back the covers, and there on MY PILLOW, was the stinky fish-bag! Ewwwww! The fish-bag battle was on!

Nick was very amused by the fish-bag fiasco. He suggested that it should show up on mom's computer keyboard. Her desk has a keyboard drawer. So Nick placed the fish-bag on her keyboard and closed the drawer. Not long after we heard the now common cry, "Ewwwww, stinky fish-bag!"

Not long after, I was at work one day innocently going about my business. I opened my portfolio (which sometimes comes home with me), and what had I brought to work that day? Ewwwww, stinky fish-bag!

I decided to hide the fish-bag in the glove compartment of my truck for a while. I went home and we laughed long and hard about the 'fish-bag portfolio incident'. Nick kept egging me on, trying to get me to put the fish-bag in Tracy's side of the bed, or some other spot for her to discover. I kept claiming that I had thrown the fish-bag away, but he didn't really believe me.

A week or two later, Tracy suggested that we put the fish-bag in Nick's luggage when he went to Africa. I immediately dismissed that idea, thinking that would be gross, and he wouldn't want to find the fish-bag there. But after another week or two, while at work one day, I envisioned Nick opening his luggage in Africa, and finding a 'stinky fish-bag' with cards and letters inside that he could read during his trip. Tracy thought that would be a great idea.

So I cleaned out the bag so it wouldn't be 'stinky' (it was never really stinky anyway, each salmon fillet was vacuum-sealed inside a separate bag). Then we each wrote three or four notes to Nick, and put them in the now famous fish-bag. Nick's Grand-ma even wrote some notes. Tracy slyly hid the surprise in his luggage on Monday night before he left.

We did hear from Nick last night that they did get their luggage (see this entry on the Northside Mission Ministry blog for more on that story). Tracy texted him, "Bags yet?" he texted back, "Yep Christmas in july". She replied, "All your stuff". He just texted this morning saying, "Yep everything- where did we put batteries- i think there gone".

No news about the well-travelled stinky fish-bag! I'm looking forward to hearing about that.

7/21/09 - 2009 Malawi Missions Trip

We got up at 4:00 AM on Tuesday and went to church. The plan for the day was to deliver 30 Youth Group Mission Team members to LAX where they would begin their long journey to Malawi, Africa. We offered to pull a large trailer full of luggage with our Toyota Highlander. We arrived at Northside at about 5:15 AM. The entire team was soon packing duffel bags with donations, weighing luggage, tagging luggage, packing luggage into cars and onto the large trailer. I figure there was about 1,320 lbs of luggage on the trailer alone! This flurry of activity took a little over an hour. We took team pictures, and then a small caravan of vehicles headed out to LAX. The Northside Youth Group has been planning and preparing for this missions trip for at least the last 6 months.

Tracy and I had the privilege of taking our Nick, John (the Youth Pastor), Sarah (John's wife), Layla (Sarah's BFF) and Nic (another Nick!) in our car - 7 seats, 7 people, it was cozy. Needless to say, we didn't drive up the Grapevine grade at 65 MPH. It was more like 40 MPH at a few spots. When we stopped near Bakersfield, one of the other drivers looked at the trailer, and our little Highlander and said, "you would think they would have had someone with a V8 pull that thing!". I had to agree.

Somewhere near that point, John the Youth Pastor realized he had forgotten a camcorder. So he got on the phone and within 30 to 45 minutes, we had a camera ready to pickup just off Interstate 5 in Castaic (just North of 6 Flags Magic Mountain). That detour only took 15 minutes, and we were off again!

We had a rousing good time on the way. There was a fair amount of nervous excitement in the car, which made for some good traveling-fun. I learned a lot about the Bachelorette, the latest iPhone tricks, a few words in 'Malawi-ese' and got to know some great people for the first time!

We all met up near the airport, so we could all drive in and unload at the same time. We needed to do this because you are not supposed to camp-out in the unloading zone waiting around for others to arrive. The caravan all hit the road together with just another mile South to the airport. We were all looking good, except for the one car that got on the North-bound freeway entrance (they arrived at the unloading zone safely after everyone else was probably gone).

Just as we were entering the airport, we were stopped at a security check-point. The Security guy motioned for me to stop (I guess we looked a little suspicious with our big trailer full of something mysterious covered by large tarps). He asked me what I had. I told him we were a part of a group of 30 people who were departing for Malawi Africa on a missions trip. He immediately understood and told us to go on through. I'm sure he heard a similar story from the next 8 cars.

When we found the international departures- Lufthansa Airlines drop point, I felt like we were on a Swat Team prepping for an emergency situation. We were double-parked, with a small bus also double-parked in front of us. The trailer was sticking out into the lane of traffic to our left (there was not enough space for me to pull forward and get the trailer out of that lane). We all jumped out and immediately began ripping off the bungee cords and tarps covering the luggage. Then we hauled 30 bags off the trailer and made 3 piles of ten bags each on the sidewalk. Everyone had their carry-on bags out of the car, and Bobs-your-uncle, we were ready to go. We gave Nick a very quick hug, and told him we loved him and to have a good time. We said goodbye to everyone else, then jumped back into the car and hit the highway. It wasn't exactly the way I wanted to say goodbye, but oh well, what cha gonna do?

Check the Northside Short-term Missions blog for details on their trip. The blog will be updated frequently while the team is gone.

Nick sent us a text message yesterday. He said, "Arrived late yester - bags have not - having an amazing time - love u both"

We can't wait for his next text message!

Attitude

Ever notice how much someone’s outlook makes a difference in how they do things. A good example of is Tiger Woods, he simply knows he can win. I bet a major part of his ability to win, has to do with the fact that he knows he can. One small example from my life came years ago. When I was downhill skiing back in my younger days, I came to realize something. As I was headed down a challenging hill, I would sometimes find my tips crossed, or for some other reason I would get off balance and begin to fall. I discovered that if I gave in to the thoughts of falling, I would usually fall. But, if I ‘knew’ I would recover, then I usually did recover, and avoided falling. I suppose some would just call this the ‘power of positive thinking’.

I saw this quote that goes with this line of thought –

• “If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” – Gandhi

Here are some other famous quotes –

• “Don’t think you can, know you can” – Morpheus
• “Do, or do not, there is no try” - Yoda
  
  
  

The First Night in the Brown House

The stucco guys showed up at 7:00 AM. They were done by 2:00. We like the color. We've spent the first 17 years together in a yellow house. The next 17 (give or take 10 or 15 years) will be in a brown house...

The Last Night in the Yellow House

The 2009 Summer project is just about to hit its climax. Last year the priority was replacing the fence. That was a lot of work, and relatively expensive. The next priority is the stucco. It's not quite as much work, because we are going to hire someone to do it. But it is more expensive! We've got a fair amount of damage to the stucco at the base of the house. Plus we're not to thrilled with the yellow color of our house. Those issues brought it to the top of the priority list.

Here's a shot where you can see how badly the stucco is coming off at the bottom of the walls. This was just after I went around and knocked off all the loose stucco the day before Joe, the "Stucco guy", came to do the patch-work.

All the patch-work was done last week. Joe wanted to get that done a few days ahead of time so it had plenty of time to dry. In this shot you can see some of the patch-work Joe had to do.


Since we are going to re-dash the house, we also plan to re-paint all the trim, doors and gables. That means we have to do something about the gutters. They were in a sorry state so we've decided to rip them down and put up new gutters. So I pulled all the nails out, and they fell right off the house! That was easy...




We also had an old dog-pen at the back of the garage. That was another Saturday project. The dog-pen fence was held in place by five steel poles in concrete. I bought a saws-all and cut off all 5 poles at the concrete. We cleared everything off the back patio and away from the house. This is the most clean the back of the house has ever been!

Last Saturday's project was to put trim around the sliding glass door on the patio. We replaced that door 7 or 8 years ago. I've been waiting for the 'stucco-project' ever since. I wasn't sure if the trim needed to be installed before or after the stucco work was done. The final answer was, it needed to be installed before the stucco was done.

Here's the 'before' picture -


And about 4 hours hours later (I'm getting familiar with this trim-work) here's the 'after' picture -

Today I dug a couple of inches of dirt away from the base of the house and checked Joe's patch-work. There were a few spots that needed further touch-up (I know, I'm an anal-retentive detail-fanatic). So I did some final patching before the big day. Here's a sample of my patch-work. It's the darker gray area below the drain spout.


We had a 'sample page' showing the different colors of stucco we could choose from. We wanted a medium brown color, so we picked that off the sample page. Joe picked up samples of the specific colors we selected and put a small patch of each on the side of the house. After 2 tries and 5 colors, we still hadn't found our medium brown color. Finally we told Joe, "We just want brown!" He came with two more samples and finally, one was brown. 'Canyon Clay' is third from the left...

Tonight will be the last time we sleep in a yellow house. Tomorrow night our house will be brown.

4/24/09 - Avocado Tree Removal

We had some guys remove one of our Avocado trees. It always gave us small avocados that weren't very good to eat. And to top it off, there were hundreds, maybe even a thousand of them some years - a lot of avocados to clean up every week. So I hired a tree company to remove it. They also trimmed our Juniper trees.

Here's the before picture -



I'm glad I didn't try to do it myself, it would have taken the whole weekend. These guys did it in a couple of hours.





These guys had some manly power tools. My testosterone level went up just standing near them...



Here's the after picture -